If you’ve never heard of the “gig economy,” today you’ll learn about an emerging trend that will be sure to garner your attention in the months ahead.

It’s one of the most powerful forces in today’s employment marketplace.  Decisions being made about how it functions will likely impact large swaths of the economy—including the real estate industry.

Some of the most important structures, regulations, and policies used by the real estate industry are being called into question, and it’s all happening in areas unrelated to real estate.

What can you do to counterbalance these forces?  The first step is to educate yourself and start to recognize developments taking place in various service industries.

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I had the privilege of spending some time with the executive team of a high-performing real estate company in California earlier this week.

When I say they’re high-performing, I’m not referring to the traditional metrics describing the performance of a real estate company (market share, # of transactions, per agent productivity, etc.). Although, they are high in all of these categories, as well.

I’m referring to recruiting performance. This organization does an outstanding job of finding and hiring talented individuals from outside of the real estate industry and launching them into prosperous new careers inside their company.

Here’s the shocking part. When I visited this company 18-months ago, they were terrible at this task. In fact, they were one of the worst performing recruiting companies among those organizations using our company’s candidate sourcing services.

Now, that’s all changed.

In the last half of 2013, they grew their hires by 50%. In 2014, they doubled (100% growth) the number of hires from the previous year. In 2015, they’re on track to grow again by more than 50% (compared to the 2014 finish).

What’s going on?

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One of the most common complaints we hear from recruiters, recruiting coordinators, and hiring managers is:

Candidates don’t adequately read online job postings before applying for jobs.

This comes to light when a percentage of candidates (usually about 10% in most markets) report they’ve progressed through the entire application process for a real estate agent position, and then claim (once you have them live on the phone) they have applied for a completely different position—a position that doesn’t exist.

Has there been some mix-up on the internet causing this confusion?  I don’t think so.

For our company, this application process involves going to two different webpages highlighting the real estate agent position.  It then requires the candidate to spend 10 to 15 minutes taking a short assessment and answering some basic screening questions about becoming a real estate agent.

In essence, the application is designed to encourage the candidate to exit the process if they’re not interested in becoming a real estate agent.  And yet, some persist and engage recruiters insisting they’re applying for a phantom position.

What’s going on?  Can they not read?  Are they stupid? Are they purposefully trying to manipulate the process?  If the last assumption is true, why would candidates do this?

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Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been discussing the importance of innovation.

It’s essential that an innovative mindset permeate every part of a business.  The process of reinvention is what infuses life into an organization.  It makes everything new and vibrant.

In our final discussion on innovation, we’ll focus on applying what we’ve learned to the topic of recruiting, the ultimate new growth innovation for a real estate company.

As many of our readers know, we help real estate companies recruit more effectively.  In a consulting role, we get a front row seat to the recruiting processes organizations are using and the new innovations they are trying to implement.

From this perspective, we view some of the highest performing companies in the country do incredibly innovative things that produce remarkable returns.

On the other hand, we also see some recruiting projects turn into miserable failures.

What’s the difference between the two outcomes?  The successful companies understand the nature of innovation.

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